1. Does Your Story Idea Suit Animation?

Make sure animation is the best form your story could take. There needs to be a distinct purpose behind the choice of writing an animated film. Embrace the freedom of imagination that an animated film can offer, utilising it to shape the tone, style, narrative and characters of your screenplay.

2. How Do You Write an Animated Film Script?

Be detailed in your descriptions. Remember that you are creating a unique and specific world and that your screenplay is the first step in a process encompassing teams of animators and designers. Let your imagination run wild but be efficient and clear in how you convey that imagination.

3. What is the Importance of Storyboarding?

An animated film is a long, exhaustive process and storyboarding is key to this process as it breaks down the screenplay into visual steps. As a screenwriter, this won't necessarily be your responsibility. But it's an important step to remember when writing a screenplay for an animated film, as how you write will affect the storyboarding process.

4. How do You Keep Your Audience in Mind?

Keep focused on the core message and purpose of your story and trust in any audience. Don't patronise a younger audience but don't cloy after an adult one. Moreover, think of the bigger picture. An animated film has the potential to reach out easily across the world. Try, where possible, to prime you script for such an eventuality.

5. What is Writing an Animated Film Like for a Screenwriter?

Because a screenwriter is just one cog of many in putting together an animated film, it can often feel like they are sidelined in the process. If embarking on writing an animated film, don't be naive as to the overall process of making an animated film and the hierarchies that exist. Writing an animated film might seem like the easy option, removing the complications of live action filmmaking. But the complexities of bringing a screenplay to life remain whether you're working with humans or cartoons.

How to Write an Animated Film: 6 Vital Steps to Scripting Animation

Have you always had an affinity for animation? Do you have a story idea that you think would be perfect for an animated film? Are you simply finding that your live-action project can’t move forward, and want to see if it could be a match for animation?

Animation is incredible in that it isn’t just another genre of film (in fact, it really shouldn’t be considered a film genre at all) but it is an entirely different medium through which to tell a visual story.

This includes traditional animation methods like hand-drawn 2D animation or 3D computer-generated animation, but also can include stop-motion animation as well as puppets.

We’ve compiled a few things to consider if you are about to embark on the journey of writing an animated film. We’ll ask:

Does Your Story Idea Suit Animation?
How Do You Write an Animated Film Script?
What is the Importance of Storyboarding?
How Do You Keep Your Audience in Mind?
And What is Writing an Animated Film Like for a Screenwriter?

1. Your Story Idea Needs Animation?

What is great about animation is that you will use the standard format for a screenplay. So no surprises there! But let us be clear: not every story should be translated into animation. The medium needs to fit the content.

So consider if your script meets these qualifications:

a) Specific Scenes and Characters Will Be Better With Animation

You need to have specific scenes or characters that will greatly benefit from being animated (if you’re pitching, make sure to highlight this). Whether aesthetically or character-based, you need to have reasoning.

Think about classic Disney or Pixar films. Franchises like Pixar’s TOY STORY and CARS couldn’t have worked if they had not been animated. The toys and cars needed to be animated to be appealing (otherwise they would have just been creepy!). Animation allowed the creators to create individualized settings for the characters, that don’t exist in real-life.

Remember how weird the supporting characters in Disney’s recent live-action remake of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST looked (ie the household objects like Lumiere, Mrs Potts, and Cogsworth)? And how the castle just wasn’t quite as magical? That is because they had worked best in animation, and seeing them in a more realistic form felt odd to many audiences.

In animation, a character such as Lumiere ( a candlestick) can be brought to life with exaggerated expressions and fluid movement. It’s, in a sense, meant to be unrealistic. But depicted in a more realistic form Lumiere feels adversely more unconvincing. It looks as weird as an actual candlestick would look if it came to life. And that doesn’t feel in keeping with the imagination the story intended.

b) Your Film Genre Will Be Easier or Better in Animation

Many animated films often employ the fantasy genre or science fiction genre, because it is easier to create those worlds using animation. Also, many children’s books or comics fall into one of these genres, and are adapted into animated films (did you know that the HARRY POTTER movies were originally pitched as an animated film series by Steven Spielberg?)

But this doesn’t mean animated films need to be in the fantasy or science-fiction genre, or even have anthropomorphic characters.

Animation can overlap with almost any film genre or sub genre. And that can work to your advantage. Again, think about what animation brings to your story that couldn’t be brought by live action. Does this bear relevance to the story and its purpose?

c) No, Your Live-Action Film Should Not Be Made Into An Animated Film For Convenience

Given how diverse animation is becoming, with different styles and genres being used (and especially with the rise of adult animation in TV), you could argue that any script could become animation.

But that’s not true. Many films should be live-action, because that will be the best medium for it.

Yes… if you want to make a live-action film into an animated one, you can always do that (look at the animated episode of THE BLACKLIST that came out this year due to Covid shutting down their production). But if your project will be better as live-action, you may want to wait for it to be filmed with real actors.

Now some may point to the 2019 Award-winning French animated film I LOST MY BODY, and say that could have easily been live-action. It is in a contemporary modern setting and features adult human characters.

But there was a specific reason that their team chose animation: the severed hand. The story is of a severed hand making its way back to the young man it was detached from.

That odd character would have been ghastly to look at, even in a CG-realistic form. Yes, it doesn’t have any dialogue, but it is obviously crucial to the story. And so they needed to make it an animated film. The animation served a distinct purpose in palatably realising a quirky and crucial (and otherwise gruesome) aspect of the story.